Genius Tips
Grafting Genius
I know there’s lots of excellent sock knitting happening right now, thanks to Fatimah Hinds’ designs in Field Guide 27: Sock Odyssey.
An area that can be a little bit sticky with socks is the grafting. Grafting—sometimes referred to as Kitchener stitch—is a clever seaming method used to join two sets of live stitches. Fatimah uses it for the heel, and for the toes of her top-down socks.
There are two reasons that we might not love grafting:
- there’s a whole load of steps to the process, which we have to learn or look up every time and
- if you lose track of where you are things can get a bit messy.
It’s not at all easy to fudge.
But! I’m here to save with you my Genius Grafting trick: learn this ONE THING and you’ll never have to recite the mantra again (or look it up).
And, as a BONUS, there’s a clever shortcut that makes your life easier, your toes tidier, and heels handsomer.
Nice and tidy!
A Brilliant Bonus
The way grafting is traditionally taught, in addition to the main repeat, there are separate starting and ending steps. The BONUS is that for a sock toe or heel, it actually looks better if you just don’t do them: which means you don’t have to learn them.
To be specific, skip the starting and ending steps, and just work the repeat all the way across.
And even if you’ve got the grafting steps fully committed to memory, and you don’t need the Genius Trick, this Bonus is still going to make your life better.
One Genius Trick
The big picture with grafting is that you have two sets of stitches to be joined. You thread the yarn tail onto a darning needle, and weave the end through the live stitches, back and forth between the two sets of stitches, to pull them together.
The tricky bit is that you have to be precise about where the darning needle goes—into which stitch and from which direction.
On the front set of stitches, you put the darning needle through the first stitch as if to knit, then let it slide off the knitting needle. Then put the darning needle through the (new) first stitch as if to purl, but let it stay on the knitting needle.
On the back set of stitches, you put the darning needle through the first stitch as if to purl, then let it slide off the knitting needle. Then put the darning needle through the (new) first stitch as if to knit, but let it stay on the knitting needle.
And keep going, repeating these two steps, until you’ve worked through all the stitches.
Once you have worked all the way across, you’ll end up with one stitch each on the front and back, with the yarn pull through them each once. And you can stop there! Let them drop off the knitting needles and you’re done.
You always work twice on each side: into the first stitch, slip it off; then into the next stitch, and leave it on. Many of us (myself included) struggle to remember which direction to put the darning needle in.
Here’s the Clever Trick: you actually don’t have to memorize that. If you hold the work the way it’s shown in the photo below, the fabric tells you what you need to do.
Yarn needle threaded with yarn tail, and work held so that the fabric hangs down from the needle.
The first step on either set of stitches is set by the facing side of the fabric; the second step is determined by the back side of the fabric.
That is, on the front set of stitches, the first step is knitwise, the second step is purlwise.
Step 1: put the needle through the stitch knitwise, since it’s the first side of the fabric.
Step 2: put the needle through the stitch purlwise, since that’s the second (back) side of the fabric.
On the back set of stitches, the first step is purlwise and the second set is knitwise.
Step 1: put the needle through the stitch purlwise, since that’s the first side of the fabric.
Step 2: put the needle through the stitch knitwise, since it’s the second (back) side of the fabric.
There are more clever tricks to grafting other sorts of knitted materials, like reverse stockinette and garter stitch. We’ll look at those in the next column.
Here’s a bonus while you wait: this column dives deep into other ways to improve the look of sock toes.
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knit on, purl off – purl off, knit on – easy peasy
Tricky but doable now. Thanks.
But shouldn’t it be
*knit off, purl on*
purl off, knit on
Trying “knit on, purl off” on the first side doesn’t seem right?
This is exactly why this is confusing to me. Kate’s advice is wonderful, but it’s not clear to me when the stitch is pulled off vs. left on. Oh dear – now I’m confusing myself, as usual!
Hello Ginny,
After the first step, always slip; after the second, always leave it on. I hope that helps!
Kate
You’re right. Knit off, purl on on the near side, and purl off, knit on on the far side.
I don’t get lost as long as I remember that the purl bumps are supposed to land on the inside of the sock (if I’m working stockinette), so I scoop accordingly.
Some people find it easy to remember those steps, some people don’t. I’m glad you do! I always struggled to remember it, myself.
My solution is to help those who need a different way to think of it, or a bit of logic to help it make sense and maybe stick in the memory.
Plus — this is the important bit I think! — if you wait for the follow-up article, you’ll see how reading your knitting can help you graft non-stockinette fabrics…
Kate
Read your knitting!
Excellent, thank you!
I am making a sweater that calls for grafting the sleeves seam. That was a lot of Kitchener but I have discovered that I actually really enjoy Kitchener stitch and like much of knitting I kind of marvel that someone thought of that!!
Thank you, Kate. You are correct; the toe looks much better without that first step. And the timing of this article was perfect. I had just picked up a Christmas stocking to graft the toe when I stopped to read your clever trick.
Thank you! I have to look it up every time. Your explanation makes perfect sense. Can’t wait for the next article
Don’t do the first and last steps???? Wow. I just finished a pair of socks. I guess I’d better start another !
I have knit a lot of socks! I have used reading my knitting to help with memorizing this stitch. I always do the extra steps then struggle to make them smooth at the ends row.
Mind blown! Thank you! I love that there’s always more to learn and share.
I always remember that you knit off the knits and purl off the pearls. Once a stitch comes off you do the opposite thing to the stitch that was to the left of the one you just dumped. Works for every single stitch.
1 off, next on, switch needle you’re working on, 1 off, next on, switch needle, repeat.
It’s pretty intuitive once you get that.
Kate, you are wickedly clever!! Thank you for the bonus – the “ears ” have always bothered me & I have more or less created my own method of fixing it. Yours however, takes the cake. It’s neat & really worth the extra effort.
Thank you again. I’m a committed sock knitter now.
SureenM
I learned from Barbara Walker’s book, way back in 1968. I know that the stitch is telling me what I need to do just before I drop it – knit and drop the knit stitches and purl and drop the purl stitches. That just leaves the question of “What is the prep step?” Simple — you prepare the K’s by purling and you prepare the P’s by knitting.
Take it one stitch at a time – front and then back, repeat. Done.
Thanks! I have always messed up those last 2 stitches somehow, but not anymore.
THIS IS AMAZING! I love it so much – thank you!
Thank you for demystifying this! I have avoided socks in part because Kitchener’s apparent complexity seemed intimidating. Now I am off to look at sock yarns and patterns.
I took a class where the teacher skipped the setup as well. She wrote on a whiteboard “K off” for the first move you should do. The way she wrote it looked like “KOFF”, or “cough”. So every time I do Kitchner stitch, I think of “cough” and I remember the first movement in grafting.
Amazing so hard to find a pattern for little socks
Cheers
Hi Heather! Are you looking for baby sock patterns? I have a couple of freebies on Ravelry…
Kate
OH MY GOSH! I just used this and it was so easy and looked so good! The best part was the four close-up pictures. What a game changer!
this is a brilliant explanation thanks.
Tricky but doable now. Thanks.
Brilliant!
I recently used a Finchley graft on a pair of socks. Any thoughts on that technique?
FWIW, I feel like this trick would be great to see in a video!
This is brilliant. Thank you for sharing.